Jeremiah 22:26-27 – Our Dislocated Desire
26 So I will cast you out, and your mother who bore you, into another country where you were not born; and there you shall die. 27 But to the land to which they desire to return, there they shall not return. Jeremiah 22:26-27, New King James Version
Amy Layne Litzelman questions, “Do you find yourself in a dry place today? Don’t look back toward the land of your bondage. He is now offering you a great opportunity. He is longing to reveal his sovereignty to you by providing for you in this most hot and dry place."
We scoff, brothers and sisters, at the Israelites in Scripture who would long for Egypt where they knew slavery. Perhaps a less alien example for us as God extricates us from the prison of nostalgia is His admonition to Coniah in Jeremiah 22:26-27. His chains were gilded rather than rusted, heart-sought rather than heavy, invited rather than imposed.
His family habit was to use kingly prerogatives, the royal authority given by God for servant leadership, to prioritize comfort. As always, it was easier to customize the immediate environment than to deal with the more embedded idols in self and culture.
Thus, plucked from the self-created and self-maintained cocoon in which he invested so much by God's sentence of exile, God says that the prevailing desire of the king and his mother will be to return to that individually crafted and protected situation. God's unsettling and uprooting reveals the extent to which Judah's leaders served themselves.
Imagine the extent to which the countrymen they lead into exile would feed off of their discipline and inspirational example? If they as the royal family had used years of blessing to focus on the sovereignty of God and humility before Him, whether or not the culture followed when more comfortable distractions were available, what they exuded in a time of national upheaval would have been something more empowering than royal whining.
They would have understood that their function as human royalty was to reflect, however imperfectly, the Kingdom of Heaven, that reflection of God's authority which remains in place from culture to culture and location to location.
Had they prepared their hearts for this day, they might have responded to dislocation as David did, proclaiming the righteousness of God to give and take away authority with its accompanying blessings. They might have, like him, been such practiced intercessors and servant leaders that they sought to take whatever punishment God deemed necessary on themselves rather than see their sheep scattered and suffering. This, we know in retrospect, was David's glory in some of his best moments, and Christ's glory throughout His ministry.
What does dislocation, to whatever extent, reveal about what rules our hearts and how we use the authority and influence God has given us? If a fellow exile looked to us for perspective as we were going through a mutually difficult situation, what would he or she learn of our ultimate desire? Would he or she simply be a receptacle for our self-centered, shortsighted nostalgia as we, in effect, complain against God for the comforts He took?
Or, would our spirit in truth be a KING'S spirit, revealing in that difficult season the sweet fruit of faith years in cultivation? In time of dislocation out of our control, would fellow exiles hear of our certainty of the goodness of God as unshakable King? Would they hear in inflections that bespeak a relationship of our confidence that what demolishes our Earthly kingdoms and discomfit us as citizens of temporary polities simply gives us a better understanding of the boundlessness of that eternal state in which we will rule and reign with Christ?
Beware the easy answer. We would see ourselves regally. We would ask of our courtiers who will tell us what we want to hear. In this case, truly with Proverbs, the wounds of a friend who will tell us of our errant, persistent, self-seeking, unworthy desires are better than the kisses of an enemy.
For we, Christian, are kings uncrowned, kings in exile, as much as Coniah. Those God has given us to influence are watching downstream of our deepest desires. Will we prepare them for the Heavenly country, or will we constantly cast their eyes backwards to what transitory comforts have been lost?
Amy Layne Litzelman questions, “Do you find yourself in a dry place today? Don’t look back toward the land of your bondage. He is now offering you a great opportunity. He is longing to reveal his sovereignty to you by providing for you in this most hot and dry place."
We scoff, brothers and sisters, at the Israelites in Scripture who would long for Egypt where they knew slavery. Perhaps a less alien example for us as God extricates us from the prison of nostalgia is His admonition to Coniah in Jeremiah 22:26-27. His chains were gilded rather than rusted, heart-sought rather than heavy, invited rather than imposed.
His family habit was to use kingly prerogatives, the royal authority given by God for servant leadership, to prioritize comfort. As always, it was easier to customize the immediate environment than to deal with the more embedded idols in self and culture.
Thus, plucked from the self-created and self-maintained cocoon in which he invested so much by God's sentence of exile, God says that the prevailing desire of the king and his mother will be to return to that individually crafted and protected situation. God's unsettling and uprooting reveals the extent to which Judah's leaders served themselves.
Imagine the extent to which the countrymen they lead into exile would feed off of their discipline and inspirational example? If they as the royal family had used years of blessing to focus on the sovereignty of God and humility before Him, whether or not the culture followed when more comfortable distractions were available, what they exuded in a time of national upheaval would have been something more empowering than royal whining.
They would have understood that their function as human royalty was to reflect, however imperfectly, the Kingdom of Heaven, that reflection of God's authority which remains in place from culture to culture and location to location.
Had they prepared their hearts for this day, they might have responded to dislocation as David did, proclaiming the righteousness of God to give and take away authority with its accompanying blessings. They might have, like him, been such practiced intercessors and servant leaders that they sought to take whatever punishment God deemed necessary on themselves rather than see their sheep scattered and suffering. This, we know in retrospect, was David's glory in some of his best moments, and Christ's glory throughout His ministry.
What does dislocation, to whatever extent, reveal about what rules our hearts and how we use the authority and influence God has given us? If a fellow exile looked to us for perspective as we were going through a mutually difficult situation, what would he or she learn of our ultimate desire? Would he or she simply be a receptacle for our self-centered, shortsighted nostalgia as we, in effect, complain against God for the comforts He took?
Or, would our spirit in truth be a KING'S spirit, revealing in that difficult season the sweet fruit of faith years in cultivation? In time of dislocation out of our control, would fellow exiles hear of our certainty of the goodness of God as unshakable King? Would they hear in inflections that bespeak a relationship of our confidence that what demolishes our Earthly kingdoms and discomfit us as citizens of temporary polities simply gives us a better understanding of the boundlessness of that eternal state in which we will rule and reign with Christ?
Beware the easy answer. We would see ourselves regally. We would ask of our courtiers who will tell us what we want to hear. In this case, truly with Proverbs, the wounds of a friend who will tell us of our errant, persistent, self-seeking, unworthy desires are better than the kisses of an enemy.
For we, Christian, are kings uncrowned, kings in exile, as much as Coniah. Those God has given us to influence are watching downstream of our deepest desires. Will we prepare them for the Heavenly country, or will we constantly cast their eyes backwards to what transitory comforts have been lost?
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